Frozen
by MapleleafCameo
Summary: Aftermath of Sherlock's return upon John's heart. Companion piece to Chapter 7 in Celestial Bodies Suite from John's POV. Rated T Established relationship. So Johnlock people:)


**A/N: So we had an ice storm last night and there's chunks of ice and broken branches everywhere and I immediately think of a story:P Oh & I am tired of Winter!**

**This is sort of a companion piece to a chapter in Celestial Bodies Suite called Tangible. This is from John's POV. You don't have to read Celestial Bodies if you haven't. But you really should – lol! Actually if you want to just read Chapter 7 I'd be okay with that. Maybe.**

**My mistakes – yeah I own them. My Canadianisms –yep, those are mine too! John and Sherlock? No! Sigh – wish I did.**

**Thanks mattsloved1 for looking it over – even if you really didn't want me to write angst:)**

Frozen

The night of the ice storm the doorbell rang and John opened it, expecting a delivery from the Chinese restaurant.

He hadn't expected the wraith-like figure, standing in the icy rain, water dripping off the edge of the hood, pulled up to shelter the face beneath. He hadn't expected a long missed, dredged from his memory, chocolate velvet voice to reach out from the hood, wrap itself around his gelid heart and squeeze. The first squeeze jumped it back into life, sparking a hope, a prayer. The second squeeze stilled again it with the thought of horror and denial.

_He's dead. He's gone._

An errant rumor also wafted through the chaos strewn corridors of his mind.

_I must stop ordering from that restaurant. Something earth shattering always happens when they deliver._

Sherlock stood in the doorway, looking like a forlorn and lost soul, water running off of his clothes, breath in visible form due to the exterior temperatures. Hesitancy cried out from every pore and he actually shuffled back and forth. John could tell, still in that irreverent part of his brain, the only part that still seemed to be working, that Sherlock wasn't sure if he was welcome.

John blinked, still in denial. He could feel the signs of shock ticking off on a medical chart in his brain.

Another wayward thought, this one remembered from a crime scene. That same voice drifting up through his memory.

"_They keep putting this blanket on me!"_

John half wished he had a blanket. He felt his knees tremble and as he gripped the door frame tighter, a humming sound began building in his ears and gray patches encroached the edge of his vision.

_Really need to sit down._

He hadn't really completed that thought when he noticed he was sitting on the bottom step leading up to the flat, not knowing how he got there. A long, pale, familiar hand gripped his shoulder.

"John?" A tentative inquiry filled with so much.

_Funny how you can still hear in one word all of the layers. He's been gone for 3 years and I slip into Sherlock speech in a blink._

He started giggling.

Until he wasn't.

His hands came up and covered his face as shuddering sobs occupied the silence between the two men.

He felt Sherlock crouch down in front of him.

"John, please…I…I don't know what to say…how to tell you…"

There was a pause as he heard the detective draw in a deep breath. "I am so sorry. More than you will never know. I can't even beginning to make reparations to you, but it was necessary. I…you…had to know, had to believe I was dead."

John wiped his face. He felt numb. He felt the hard shell that had slowly developed over the course of Sherlock's death, thicken and harden. He shuddered with the cold, not from an outside source but one that was building on the inside. The heart that had been frozen during Sherlock's death, that had beat once, twice with the thought that he was alive, stilled and became rime covered once more.

It wasn't that John wasn't happy to see Sherlock. He was overjoyed. It was self-preservation. He was building up the layers of ice to protect himself until he could deal with the ramifications, with the sense of loss and betrayal.

He exhaled heavily. He looked at the man hunkered in front of him, looked into those beautiful, beautiful eyes, filled with sorrow and pain, yearning was there too. But John could not deal with that right now, simply could not handle it, too much, too soon. If he thought about it he would become paralyzed and he needed to function. He needed to get up and move.

He stood and without emotion turned and led the way up the stairs, silently, missing the expression of hurt and confusion that flooded Sherlock's face.

After explaining to Sherlock that he had moved out of their room after Sherlock had died because it was too painful, he went up to his old/new room and sat on the bed, still and cold.

Sleep was a long time coming.

oOo

The next few days were difficult.

John neither ate nor slept but drifted ghostlike about the flat.

He felt Sherlock's intense hungry stare following him as he flit from room to room, but he just couldn't breach the widening gulf between them. He couldn't handle it. He was too fragile and needed distance.

A few days after Sherlock's return, John came downstairs to hear the shower being shut off. He walked in in time to see Sherlock emerge with a towel wrapped waist.

And in that moment he felt the first brush, the first tentative kiss of spring on the winter landscape of his pain.

His doctor persona took in the bruises and scars, some fresh upon the canvas of Sherlock's pale form. And he was beyond the lean, whippet-thin, body weight of the pre-jump days.

_He's so thin._

Sherlock was watching John's face but John ignored him and focused on the count of his ribs, gaunt and marked with the passage of what he had been through.

John painfully remembered that Sherlock had tried to tell him that first night, had tried to show John, but John, with his cold armor pulled around and trapping his heart behind it, had been unable to hear him.

Without thought, he gently ghosted a hand along the detective's side, a murmur of a touch, not quite pressing. Sherlock inhaled as if it tickled, but more like remembering other more intimate touches. John could read it all in the play of muscles under the too pale skin.

_Knife wound. Healed. But what about the scars I can't see._

He drew in a shaky inhalation of breath and a shudder beat through his body.

_Oh my god. I have been so blind._

A faint noise snapped inside John's chest. That familiar mocking voice in his head was surprised Sherlock didn't react with it. John couldn't place where he had heard a sound like that before. A faint wisp of warmth followed on the heels of the sound.

He looked up at Sherlock, looked him in the eye for the first time since he had sat on the step, recovering from the shock of the planetary systems that was his relationship with Sherlock, coming back into alignment.

Cosmic forces did not bring small insignificant changes.

They brought large tumultuous upheavals.

John felt the tilt of the worlds righting themselves as he fell into the depth of Sherlock mercuric eyes.

"I hadn't realized," he croaked, his voice cracking from the disuse of the last few days and perhaps from an overflow of the thaw of emotions that was flooding through his brain. "I didn't know."

He felt the weight of immeasurable sorrow begin to lift and the sound he had heard when his sight was restored to Sherlock' existence came again. He recognized it as the sound of a frozen river breaking apart, gunshot loud, as the melt came to John's winter heart.

He closed his eyes as the pain of the river's breakup travelled through him. He placed a hand upon Sherlock's chest to confirm through touch that he really and truly was alive and he wasn't going to disappear. He felt the first stirrings of new growth between the two of them. The green that had been protected by the winter storm, maybe a little damaged and frostbit, maybe in need of pruning, but budding stronger because of it, twined and tangled between the two.

He opened his eyes and felt hope for the first time.

But he needed to tell Sherlock that it would be slow going.

"I need time, Sherlock. You have to understand that."

The thin, taller man, lifted a weary hand and cupped his face, a sad sweet smile tugged at the corner of the detective's mouth, "That's what Mrs. Hudson said."

John's mouth quirked in response, "A wise woman is Mrs. Hudson."

Sherlock tentatively wrapped his long arms around John's waist and, as if asking permission, waited until John lay his head upon the warm, beating chest, soaking up the new sun pouring forth.

John sighed as Sherlock's chin rested on top of his head. He closed his eyes for a long moment and then titled up to look at his love.

Sherlock lifted a graceful eyebrow and bent and softly kissed him on his mouth.

The last of the frost broke free and John let Sherlock deepen the kiss, pressing into him with all the pain and loss of the missing years. John felt his lips and tongue move in response to familiar practices as they stood there, filling with desire and returning love.

Winter was over.


End file.
